Many businesses and other types of organizations have a number of computers that are used by employees. These computers are often interconnected to form a computer network. One or more system administrators may be responsible for managing the organization's computers. A system administrator's responsibilities typically include installing and configuring new hardware and software, assigning user accounts and passwords, establishing security access levels, performing backups, troubleshooting reported problems, and so forth. In larger organizations, some of these tasks may be divided between different system administrators. A computer system that is used by a system administrator is commonly referred to as an administrative system. The computers (or other electronic devices) that a system administrator manages may be referred to as managed nodes. An environment having an administrative system and a managed node may also be known as an environment including a server and a client.
Systems management software may be used to provide system administrators with the ability to remotely perform management operations on managed nodes. This remote management capability can save system administrators a significant amount of time because they are able to perform management operations on a managed node without the need to physically visit the managed node. An example of systems management software that is used by various organizations is the LANDESK® Management Suite. Systems management software enables a system administrator who is working at an administrative system to send management-related requests to managed nodes, which process and fulfill the requests.
Managed nodes may also query the administrative system for commands, data, files, and so forth that may be downloaded by the managed nodes for management purposes. This is often referred to as “polling” the administrative system. Managed nodes may also volunteer data to an administrative system. For example, a managed node may post a file or data to the administrative system, send an inventory scan to the administrative system, etc. In addition, managed nodes may send a query based request to the administrative system to request the administrative system to resolve something for the managed node.
Unfortunately, polling techniques as well as techniques to volunteer data and techniques to send query-based requests may be ineffective when multiple managed nodes attempt to connect to the administrative system. The time delay for the administrative system to respond to each of the multiple managed nodes may increase as the number of managed nodes connecting to the administrative system increases. Similarly, the amount of chattiness on the computer network also increases as the number of managed nodes connecting to the administrative system increases. The efficiency of the computer network may decrease as the amount of chattiness increases. Limitations of a server or network may contribute to the inefficiency of the computer network. For example, a broker system connected to the network may add a limitation on the number of connections that can be effectively brokered. In other words, the broker system may be the main bottleneck and the reason why a plurality of managed polling simultaneously may be ineffective.
System administrators are under a tremendous amount of pressure to perform their duties in an efficient and productive manner. Accordingly, benefits may be realized by improved systems and methods for increasing the scalability in a client/server environment in order to improve the efficiency of managing one or more managed nodes.